If you’ve ever been frustrated in your painting with hand cramps or pain in the hand holding your model, it might be time to invest in a good model holder for you to paint with. Many of these guys are expensive, clocking in at $20+ each, but this innovative little gadget can cost you pennies per use. Come check out this super fast, super cheap DIY project that will change the way you paint forever!

Jaden breaks the current LoS picture count record as he details a painting method he's fallen in love with over the last few months - Sketch Style! He'll take you step by step through the process from priming to finished product. Come have a look!

Prologue:
A couple of months ago I wrote up a review for the Broken Egg Games Aspect Markers (Which you can read here if you are so inclined, and you can purchase these tokens here if you want to follow along at home), and included a photo at the end with my personal set of painted ones.

I got a LOT of questions regarding how I had done them, but since I was leaving for the ATC the next morning, I just said that I would be writing up a "how to" guide shortly and left it at that.

To my shame, I completely forgot, and so I am writing this up to rectify that. To all of my readers who messaged or commented asking for the guide, I am sorry this took so long. Hopefully it was worth the wait!

I am using exclusively P3 paints and inks for this project, with one exception which will be noted when it comes up.

Body:
Step 1:

Don't bother priming these. Apply a layer of red ink to the recesses of the tokens.

Step 2:

Apply a thin layer of Sulfur Yellow to every raised area. Once it is completely dry, check for opacity - you may need a second layer.

Step 3:

Blend Morrow White into the tip of each "flame" and also to various points on the letters. I used two brush blending for this.

Already you can see the beginnings of fire-like effects after just one highlight.

Step 4:

Apply a thin glaze of Citadel Troll Slayer Orange to the farthest edges from the Morrow White. I recommend a couple of thin glazes accompanied by some blending for best results.

(A Glaze is a very thin paint, similar to a wash but not as wet - apply it in thin layers and blend the edge with a clean, wet brush to achieve this look)

Step 5:

Use Khador Red Base in a very thin glaze or two over about half of the area where Troll Slayer Orange went.

You may also find it necessary to blend some of the Sulfur Yellow back in if you got a little too enthusiastic with the shade colors.

Just like that, you're done!

Mind:
Step 1:

Again, don't bother priming these! The fifth one at the top is an example of a finished marker.

Apply a Blue Ink to the recesses of each token.

Step 2:

Apply thin layers of Arcane Blue to the raised areas until you have a nice, opaque coat. Should take about two goes.

Let the paint dry completely between each layer.

Again, the top right one is a finished token.

Step 3:

Blend Morrow White into the tips, just like with the Body tokens. The smoother your blend the better.

This should also be used to highlight the letters of "Mind".

Step 4:

Take a glaze of Cygnar Blue Base and apply it to the areas farthest from the White, and also on the letters.

I believe it took two thin glazes to get the saturation to where I was happy with it for these ones.

Spirit:
Step 1:

Don't prime them, and apply a Green Ink to the sunken areas. The far right token is a finished one for comparison.

Step 2:

Apply a couple of thin coats of Wurm Green to the raised areas. Again, you want a nice opaque coat, so apply multiple, thin layers, and let them dry between each one.

Step 3:

Blend Morrow White into the tips, as you did for the other two aspects. At the same time, add highlights to the letters with the white paint.

Step 4:

Take Gnarls Green and apply a few layers of thin glaze to the far edges of the "flames" and also to the letters of "Spirit" to make the words pop.

I recommend finishing these off with a Matte spray varnish to protect the paint.

Here are a couple of group shots - I spent far, far too long staring at these under the lamp before snapping out of the trance. The colors are just so pretty!

These techniques can be used on all kinds of wooden tokens, and are quite enjoyable too! It's nice to spend 10-15 minutes on something and have it be done rather than spending hours and hours on a model.

The added color really makes them pop on the table, and also makes them easier to pick out of my tokens bin.

Prologue:
You know that fully painted goal that seems so insanely far out of reach? That idea that seeing only really pretty models on your side of the table would really add something to the game?

Yeah I've only experienced that once or twice before the last few weeks.

As part of my push for the 2017 ATC, I forced myself to paint through both of my lists. That had some incredibly cool parts like Loki:

It also had some super sucky parts, like the entire 21 man unit of Gatorman Bokur and Shamblers:

But somehow I did it, and it was one of the things I was most proud of when I finally got there and played, every game had fully painted and based models on my half of the table.

When I got back, I decided that it was time to buy in completely, and I committed to playing fully painted in all of my games (with some small exceptions for practicing for major events). Astute readers of my blog have probably noticed that my post ATC Baldur 2 list was fully painted (if not based, those happen in batches because I hate doing them), and it was incredibly fulfilling.

Unfortunately, this means that certain really silly lists like Tanith with two units of Reeves probably won't be making an appearance for a while.

Today, I finished my Woldwrath, and I felt like sharing more than a couple of pictures.

The Story:
Four years ago, right as I became a PressGanger, I was playing Circle, and like most cool kids, I wanted a Woldwrath. (In seriousness, he was pretty mediocre back then).

So I got one, and then he sat, unassembled for a very long time since I wanted to convert him to look like his concept art.

Isn't that awesome??? Someday, when I get my second one, I'm going to legitimately putty over all of his runes and carve the big ones in, and completely resculpt his head.

But I digress.

I spent a lot of time converting other models before I eventually worked up the courage to build him.

And then, 2 weeks later, I sold him and most of my other Circle to get into another faction.

Three and a half years later, I was assembling my third go round of Circle armies, and I realized that I really wanted a Woldwrath. I ordered one off eBay, but then it fell through since the guy had double sold it.

And then my friend who had bought all of my Circle off me, who also happened to be my Press Gang mentor and an excellent modeler/painter, told me that he still had the original one as part of a Bradigus theme list, and he would happily sell it to me if I bought the whole list.

How could I say no?

Six months later now (geeze), I am finally done with this monstrosity of a paint job. He's not perfect. There's lots of little details here and there that I could (and maybe will) go back over someday. But he's painted, he looks mean, and he's ready to pound some stuff into the ground.

I decided that I was going to go crazy with his runes, which is why he looks like he's absorbed an Alienware Keyboard - I really wanted to go for a shifting LED look, and when I started him, I did that with all of the other Wolds I've finished before him....yeah he got started a long time ago.

Here's the Wyrds for an example:

The runes took an absurd amount of time - every single one had to be done minimum three times. Two coats of white for a solid backdrop followed by a coat of the color, and usually more than one coat of color.

Once those were done, the rest of the model flew by. Without further ado, here's my Woldwrath. I hope you like him as much as I do!

Front!

Part of why he stayed unfinished for so long - I did the back first and that's the part I see when I play him

Over the last few weeks, I've been working steadily on a commission for a friend of mine, and he asked me to go all out on his Avatar of Menoth.

As a result, I've gotten to practice a lot of techniques that don't often come up when you're painting tabletop level commissions, such as True Metallic Metals, Glow Effects, and multiple multiple levels of Shading and Highlighting.

I decided to go nuts on the Avatar's Sword and make it look like a bar of superheated metal, and when I posted a picture of the first side of the blade done, I got quite a few questions about how I did it, resulting in this little tutorial. I hope it is useful!

VERY IMPORTANT: LET THE PAINT COMPLETELY DRY BETWEEN EACH COAT! FAILURE TO DO SO WILL RESULT IN SPOTTY LOOKING PAINT AND MANY FRUSTRATIONS.

Okay sorry, that one is a big deal and if you don't follow that rule, nothing that follows is going to work for you.

Step one:
Base coat the blade with a dull but very opaque yellow or tan. This is important because a very bright yellow color will take dozens of coats to cover black primer without showing the underlying black through the yellow.

For my own project, I used p3 Sulfur Yellow for the basecoat.

Take the time to put down a couple of thin layers (I think this was three layers here) to get a very smooth basecoat. Remember, you're showing trying to convey polished metal, even if it is super heated.

Step two:
Take your bright yellow, and put down a few thin layers over the entirety of the dull yellow. Again, smoothness is important here so a couple of thin coats is better than one thicker coat.

This is p3 Cygnus Yellow.

Step three:
It's time to start glazing in your oranges. The warm colors descend in brightness from yellow to orange to red, and in order to get a smooth transition you need to go through each one.

Unfortunately, getting a nice blend of warm colors is very difficult. I used GW Troll Slayer Orange for my orange tone, and I thinned it down until it was almost translucent before I started putting it on the sword.

You can barely see it on my fingernail, which is exactly where I want it to be.

Another quick note - before you put the brush to the model, make sure it's not overly saturated with liquid. If your glazes pool up, they won't look right as they dry if you shift the model even a little bit. Thin, translucent coats is what we are after here.

For this blade, I glazed the "connecting" edges of the tip of the blade, and then also where the black center bumped into the yellow, leaving the edges alone and also one side of each segment of the tip.

Here is what the blade looks like after one glaze.

You can barely tell I've done anything to the sword right? That's okay. The next few repetitions will cement in the orange color. Take care to use another brush to blend out any really obvious edges where the orange ends and the yellow begins. This is less necessary the thinner your paint is.

Here is the sword after three glazes with the Troll Slayer Orange.

Starting to look much more orange-y and much less yellow-y. You can see where I've left the different edges of the tip alone, and also that I haven't touched the cutting edges of the sword.

Time for the next step!

Step four:
Step four is very similar to Step three, except you substitute the orange with a bright red and paint in less of the surface area.

I used p3 Khador Red Base for this, and just continued putting color in the same spots as I did with the orange, just with a smaller surface area.

Here we are after one glaze:

The Red is a lot stronger of a color than the orange was, and you'll need to feather the edges where you want a smooth blend more than you will with the orange.

All it took was two layers of glaze with the red until I was happy with where it was.

Here is where a lot of beginning painters would probably call it done - it's got all the right colors, and the blending is nice and smooth.

Thin it down, but not quite as much as you have the other glazes. We're going to place the white at the points where the metal would be thinnest and most hot. This is the blade edges, and in the yellow bits of the point.

This picture did not turn out quite as well as I thought it had last night, but you get the general idea - the white serves to ramp up the contrast and really make the division in colors in the tip pop.

I also used it on the edges of the blade, coming in a tiny bit where the belly of the sword widens.

If you place highlights that are too large, the effect will be spoiled. Luckily, there's a very easy fix! Take a very thin layer of the bright yellow and go over all of the white area but the extreme highlights and it will work just fine.

Conclusion:
I hope this has been helpful! Blending with the warm trio of colors is always tricky, but with patience (seriously, let the paint dry completely between each layer of glaze, highlight, basecoat, you name it) and practice, it can be stunning.